Rick Treviño gave up everything to run a shoe leather, Bernie-esque campaign for CD 23

In his losing bid for Texas' 23rd Congressional District, Rick Trevino won La Salle County, which had the sixth-highest county turnout, by about four points.

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Rick Treviño entered the race for the 23rd Congressional District in August, but he’s been campaigning for the last two years.

It began with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ March 2013 fulmination on the Senate floor against a chained consumer price index, which then-President Obama was contemplating to curb entitlement growth. Treviño, then a teacher at Sam Houston High School, was transfixed as he watched Sanders rail passionately.

From there Treviño used Sanders as a “signpost,” he said, and later started the grassroots ad-hoc “SA for Sanders” group to support Sanders’ primary run against Hillary Clinton. Treviño called Clinton a “corporate Democrat,” and observed a dynamic not unlike the one he sees in his May 22 Democratic runoff against former Air Force intelligence officer Gina Ortiz Jones, who has drawn national democratic support and outraised Treviño 25-to-1 this campaign.

Treviño, 33, prides himself on his ideological consistency and political instincts, grabbing hold of the trend toward Sanders’ creed before it morphed into a national and cultural phenomenon. He also accurately forecasted that Donald Trump could win the presidency by way of the Rust Belt.

And during the first leg of the primary, Treviño drove his 1998 Ford F-150 to areas of the district he thought other candidates would avoid, displaying his red “Texans for Bernie” bumper sticker and logging thousands of miles as he told people in colonias along the border about his vision for free public college tuition and single-payer health coverage.

“I could easily have been a Democrat that looks at the Clinton era with so much romanticism like, ‘Oh, remember when we had it all together?’ I'm glad that I made the leap that I did, because I think it's allowed me to be politically relevant and actually understand the world I live in,” Treviño said between door knocks in a West Side neighborhood. “And I think that my politics is the right politics. Because it's more class-oriented, looking at it that way. These are really class issues.”

‘Finger on the pulse’

Befitting a former history and geography teacher, Treviño carries with him a sort of mental bibliography, in this particular case citing a study by the French economist Thomas Piketty to back up the idea that political parties are orienting themselves around class. He often mentions work by economists like Joseph Stiglitz, or stories in The Intercept arguing that the groups supporting Jones, his opponent, are extensions of the party establishment.

“Rick has his finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the country and this community,” said local Democratic activist Bob Comeaux. “He is not dependent on someone else’s ideas. But he’s also open to other people’s ideas.”

For most of the last two years, Treviño has been campaigning for what is now his platform: a single-payer health system, a $15 minimum wage, free public college tuition, a move to renewables and “getting big money out of politics.”

He pushed for those ideas while campaigning for Sanders and as a national delegate in Philadelphia; as a deputy precinct chair and later secretary for the Bexar County Democratic Party; as a District 6 City Council candidate who missed the runoff by 28 votes; and around the founding of Our Revolution Texas, an affiliate of the national group that spun out of Sanders’ campaign.

The only difference from two years ago is that Treviño now wants to be the vehicle to get those issues through.

“When we first started Our Revolution Texas, Rick was there at the very start, organizing, reaching out to his students, telling people about the (movement’s) history,” said Jim Hightower, a Bernie-ite activist and former agriculture commissioner.

‘First lesson in poverty’

Several formative events brought Treviño to the current moment. He was taking an AP Government course during 9/11, which ramped up his interest in politics and civic engagement; the Iraq War began his senior year; and he graduated from college during the financial crisis, and sought financial security by earning his teaching certificate.

Then, while teaching at Sam Houston, Treviño heard a radio program about food deserts, or impoverished areas lacking fresh fruit and vegetables. He introduced the concept to his students, who then persuaded a health and wellness committee to award a grant that created a farmer’s market at the high school.

Comeaux recalled that Treviño was also constantly exploring ways for his students to attend college “without being burdened by debt,” years before Sanders brought forward free tuition in his presidential bid.

"One of my heroes is Lyndon B. Johnson, and he said he got his first lesson in poverty as a teacher. And I say that line as well because it's a reality. I saw kids dealing with real problems, with homelessness, with poverty,” Treviño said. He was also shaken when two of his students were murdered and he attended the funerals. “People that I know, people I care about, are growing up in communities that don't give people a fair shot at making it in this country,” he added.

Three days after Treviño made the runoff, he met Sanders for the first time backstage at an Our Revolution rally at the Brick at Blue Star Arts Complex. As Treviño explained how he had finished ahead of Jay Hulings, a former federal prosecutor who raised more than $600,000 (Treviño has raised about $40,000), Sanders playfully jabbed Treviño’s chest and told him he was “incredibly proud.” For his part, Treviño was proud that he didn’t “fangirl” too much in meeting Sanders.

‘You never get someone like me’

As the runoff approaches, Treviño understands he’s considered the underdog, with Jones receiving 18,443 votes to his 7,710, a 24-percentage-point gap. (He’s also aware that his shared name with the country singer likely buoyed his performance.) But “the runoff is not the primary,” Treviño said the night of the Sanders rally, alluding to the different electorate and lower expected turnout.

Treviño also flatly rejects the idea that he is too far left or radical to beat U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, the incumbent Republican. He thinks the district has been inaccurately spun as conservative, chalking that up to “flyover America narratives.” He said his ideas “make sense” to working class voters.

When Treviño quit his teaching job to run for Congress, he gave up his health coverage, took out his savings and cashed in his pension. It’s been worth it, he said, to get an inside look at the district.

“A lot of people, they present their lives as really sleek and filtered, like an Instagram page. Everyone's happy. Everybody seems to be doing alright. ,” Treviño said. “But running for Congress, people are more vulnerable, and they've let me into their lives and shown me their struggles paying the bills, their anxieties for their kids, for themselves, their retirement, their future, their job outcomes.”

He later added: “The establishment candidate usually goes up against the other establishment candidate. And you never get someone like me. And now this district has that opportunity.”

Treviño admits running a shoe leather operation has been difficult — but not as tough as his previous job.

“Running for office is 100 times easier than being a teacher,” he said.

Jasper covers City Hall, local politics and breaking news for the Houston Chronicle through the Hearst Journalism Fellowship program. He previously covered Bexar County and local politics for the San Antonio Express-News. Jasper graduated from Northwestern University in 2017 with degrees in journalism and political science. He has interned for the Tampa Bay Times, Washington Post and Fortune magazine.